


stolen fire

by t5391



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Kidnapping, M/M, Trauma, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23503135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t5391/pseuds/t5391
Summary: "Buck. Look at me. Buck. Buck."He doesn't stop saying his name until Buck peeks out from behind his trembling visage of holiness, gaze hidden by fat tears and dissociation. Bobby doesn't let him look away. "Your name is Buck. You belong to yourself. Do you want to get back in the bed?"Buck shakes his head so violently, his tears fall in opposite directions. "Evan belongs on the floor."
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Bobby Nash
Comments: 14
Kudos: 81





	1. Chapter 1

Bobby has this down to a routine, he thinks: respond to a call in the middle of the night, and shadow the police as they slink into a house that's called 911 about ten times. No lights or sudden movements from the windows tip off any of the officers, but Captain Nash and his station hang close to the bodies walking inside, in case the signal for help is given. Hen and Chimney hunker by the truck, both of their hands clutching the hose, as if it'll defend them from whoever lies within. Eddie's in the aid car, ear pressed to a walkie talkie tuned in to the investigators, and Bobby leads them all, watching the front door with masked eyes. 

Only when the chief of police gives him a wave does he approach the house, in his protective gear, but with his mask abandoned by the truck. The fire the 118 had responded to here was minor, and Hen had put it out in the seconds after she'd found the hydrant. They could all leave, technically, legally, but with the smoke tendrils billowing from the roof and the blackened walls crackling in the moonlight, Bobby has decided to stick around. In case someone's in the house and hurt, he tells Sergeant Grant, who fixes him with half-lidded eyes before marching back to her squad. 

When he gets the go-ahead, Bobby walks inside. It smells of matches and burnt toast, no chemicals, so he relaxes slightly. The cops have bracketed off a few rooms with yellow tape already, and he walks past these to find the electrical box, somewhere sequestered in the laundry room. None of the calls made tonight support the claim of arson, but they can't find a source _or_ a person.

Bobby's unscrewing the last latch and swinging the case open when he hears it. Past the sirens, past the talk of detectives and the snap of cameras surrounding the property, Bobby hears a whine. It isn't coming from the water heater or the air conditioning, since all the power has been shut off, so he tilts his head to the side to seek it out. 

There it is again. A small, soft whine, anti-mechanical. It's so human, it hurts. 

Bobby slips as quietly as his boots will allow across the tile floor, approaching the high-pitched tone until it's clearly coming from the wall. The wall? In the dim light, Bobby blinks at the smooth surface, uncomprehending—until he lays his palm against the concrete and feels the minuscule bump hiding beneath the paint. A few more nudges reward him with a latch, and he fiddles with it for a moment until a left turn clicks it out of place. 

A section of the wall cracks open, just barely. It's a door.

He pulls it open as far as it will go. The light from behind the washing machine shines through, just a little, to present an ankle in the darkness. A slim, shaking ankle, with something silver clasped to it's flesh. 

A chain. 

Bobby immediately turns his flashlight on and presses into the room. It's small, about the size of a walk-in closet, if he had to guess. When his eyes adjust, he sees a dirty mattress pressed into the corner, and not much else. Metal sticks out of the furthermost wall, almost in the shape of hooks, and one is fastened to a link of rust. 

He follows it, and swings his light up the ankle. 

A man is attached. At least, someone who used to be a man; the person cowering against the frameless bed with eyes that take up half of his skull could hardly be considered one. His ribs show in frightening detail, his malnourished body trembling in fear. A hard-to-ignore portwine stain takes over the top-half of his face, framing the sickening bruises covering his panicked features. 

His eyes. Bobby finally settles on his eyes, and he finds himself looking into the sweet, sad, tortured blue of something beautiful that has been destroyed. 

"Hello?" Bobby manages, and the man bursts into tears. 

After the police finally respond to Bobby's distress calls from downstairs and detach this person from the wall, he watches him in the light of the street. The man, shrouded in a shock blanket and various medical professionals, takes up the entire gurney with his height. When he's motioned to lay on top of it, however, his legs shrink up under him and he hides his face in his arms, becoming smaller. The EMTs lead him to the ambulance, and Bobby's about to jump into his own aid car with Eddie to follow when a scream erupts from behind him. 

Bobby turns, and the man is sitting up, turned all the way around to focus on Bobby's face. He's weeping, arms reaching out with hands not dissimilar to a child begging to be lifted. Instinctively, Bobby runs to him, and he clutches his calloused, bloody, weak hands, asking to be held. 

"You saved my life," he croaks, and although his voice is obviously broken from misuse, he doesn't stutter or falter in his words. Bobby notices this, impressed. "I called, and you came. Thank you."

"You were the one who called 911?" Grant is giving him one of her disapproving looks from over his shoulder, but Bobby ignores it, this time. 

The man hiccups, eyes refusing to leave the fresh I.V. in his arm. "I took his phone. It's against the rules, but I took it from him, and I called the cops. I took it from him."

Bobby can't help but smile reassuringly, and the way the man's shoulders sag in relief and his breath slows pleases him in a way he doesn't really understand. "It sounds to me like you saved your own life, son. What's your name?"

The man blinks, a brief bewildered look crossing his face before, unexpectedly, he starts laughing. It's a pathetic, hoarse sound, and Bobby and the officers around him watch carefully until he wipes his eyes. He looks up at Bobby, giggling, and he takes in the various scars covering his body. His face, his neck, the visible skin of his shoulders, arms, and legs—some purple and faded, some still bleeding, leaving not an inch of bare skin to be seen. 

"My name..." he chokes and those gorgeous eyes look past Bobby, to something far away. "My name's Buck. He never let me say that. But he's dead, now. I can say whatever I want." 

Bobby watches them lead Buck into the ambulance, watches them fade off into the horizon, watches even as Chimney comes up behind him and lays an undemanding hand on his shoulder. "Tough one tonight, huh, Captain?" 

After a moment, Bobby claps his own hand on top of Chimney's. "Tough one," he agrees, and they all go to the bar where Bobby drinks his mineral water, and he leans against the sticky table, and he thinks.

He thinks about Buck. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Bobby enters, Buck looks up, and for a fraction of a second, pure, unadulterated fear blossoms across his face. Once he sees who it is, he draws his legs up to his chest, blinking rapidly. "Captain Nash. Strange. I feel like we've met before."

He shouldn't be watching this. 

This is a private moment, an event that's waited to happen for seven years, apparently, and Bobby should not be standing behind a one-way mirror, witnessing it. He knows this, and yet, he still leans against the desk in front of him and watches, alone. 

Buck melts into Maddie, face hidden in her neck and arms wrapped around her slim frame. She's a small woman, with long, brown hair tied in a messy ponytail, barely thrown together in her mad dash to the station. Bobby saw her come in, too; he saw as she sprinted through the front doors, another pair of pretty eyes hidden behind another kind of pain. She'd wasted no time screaming at the closest officer to _take me to my baby brother right now or I'm going to destroy this entire fucking place and find him myself!_

According to the documents, Maddie's stayed that way the entire time Buck's been missing. She dropped out of college, took up a gig at the emergency response center in town to pay her bills, and spent the rest of her waking life searching. Bobby's sure it kills her, knowing he was thirty miles away, locked up underneath a single-stack in Santa Monica. Bobby's sure it eats her alive. 

He doesn't know why he's thinking like this. 

They sink to the floor, Maddie and Buck, him cowering until he fits perfectly. He's twice her size, but it seems they've done this before, or he's had other practice. They stay like that for a long time, both heaving with sobs and Maddie's hands going down his spine and through his short, stubby hair. When he pulls away, she gently cups his face, her own damp and red. 

"I never stopped looking for you," she whispers, although she falters on the last word and has to rest her lips against Buck's forehead to regain her composure. "I swear, Buck. I never stopped. I missed you so fucking much."

Buck lets his weak fingers fall to her sides as he leans into her kiss. "I missed you, too, Maddie. I knew you were looking for me, I knew the whole time. It's the only thing that kept me...that made me…"

Buck lets out a strangled cry, and Maddie folds him in closer, as if she can somehow keep him safe. Maybe, if she holds him tight enough, nobody will take him away again. 

Their reunion is shortly interrupted by two police officers, who ask Buck a series of questions that make him still and Maddie hiss in rage. If they get even close to asking about his captor or his trauma, Maddie curtly informs them that they're _making him upset_ ; she isn't lying, Bobby knows, but he also knows she's doing nothing but impending the investigation. He'd tell her so, if he were in the position.

Why is he here, behind the glass of an MRI room, watching a man reunite with his sister after seven years in captivity? Well, according to what he's told the police, Bobby wants to make sure Buck hasn't experienced any smoke inhalation. It could appear any time after exposure, and if someone trained isn't nearby when it begins to present itself, he could die in seconds. This is all true, medically, historically, but it isn't the real reason Bobby is here. 

What is? He isn't sure he knows himself. All Bobby's been able to pinpoint during the past few hours of his life has been the burning, tender feeling in his chest when he looks at Buck. It's a feeling he hasn't felt, ever, in his entire fifty-two years on this planet. 

So Bobby watches Buck until he's led out of the room, and then he counts a few beats before following. Hen's holed up with a handful of officers, sipping coffee and looking at files with a perturbed look on her face. She's the only one he let go with him; she's the only one he thinks he could even explain this to, if he must. For now, he lets her believe what the cops do, and lightly taps her shoulder. 

"I think he'll be okay," he tells her quietly as she stacks photos with one hand, "but I want to ask him a few questions before we head out. I know they found the assailant dead, but nothing ties him to the fire. Maybe our guy knows something."

Hen snorts half-heartedly at the fed talk, and nods towards the parted door angled away from the waiting room. "Have at it," she allows, but as he turns, she adds, "Bobby, be gentle. That boy just ran out of hell." 

Bobby turns over his shoulder and fixes her with a reassuring grin. "You know me, Hen. Gentlest guy around."

Buck looks better, propped up by pillows in a warm bed. He's allowed to get up to use the bathroom, but, so far, he's been dissuaded from moving in fear of breaking something they haven't found yet. _Dissuaded_ is the key word; not a soul has ordered or commanded him to do a thing. Consciously. So, Buck has re-met his sister in the fragile privacy of an MRI room, watched the tranquility shatter in the face of intrusive questions, and seems to have found himself back in his room. 

When Bobby enters, Buck looks up, and for a fraction of a second, pure, unadulterated fear blossoms across his face. Once he sees who it is, he draws his legs up to his chest, blinking rapidly. "Captain Nash. Strange. I feel like we've met before."

He smiles crookedly, after a beat, and Bobby returns it. He slowly approaches the bed, sitting in the plastic chair tucked to the side, and doesn't speak until Buck manages to look in his eyes. "Under some bad circumstances, I'm afraid. I'm only supposed to be here to monitor your oxygen intake, make sure you haven't ingested any smoke. You feel any shortness of breath, light-headedness?"

Buck's blinking stops. "Supposed to be?" His eyes drop, something clouding in his pupils. "Are you here for something else?"

The way Buck's voice changes makes Bobby's stomach churn and his heart race at the same time. The sarcastic tone from a sentence before has given way to a timid, barely audible whimper. Buck's eyes melt into something gooey and wet and very, very wrong. "Buck?" Bobby asks. He touches Buck's thigh beneath the sheets. 

He goes completely, utterly, rigidly frozen, and Bobby stumbles backwards, calling for help. A few nurses race in to check his vitals, and Maddie isn't far behind. Another woman is next to her, much older and much more haggard, and Bobby presumes it's their mother. 

"Evan?" the woman shouts over the commotion. Buck's eyes go wider than Bobby thought was possible on a human being, and he feels with everything in him that he has to stop her, shut her up, but he's rooted to the spot. He's just the first responder. He shouldn't even be here. "Evan, honey? Are you okay?"

Something bad happens, now. The staff barely miss being knocked down as Buck falls to the floor, knees cracking violently. His hands go into prayer position beneath his chin, and he bows so low, his nose touches the ground. "Evan belongs to you," he mumbles, so quietly nobody can hear; nobody but Bobby, who heard something just like it in the laundry room five hours prior. "Evan's body is yours. Evan's thoughts are yours. Evan's life is yours. Evan—"

Somehow, through Buck's mother's confused screaming, Maddie's horrified tears, the doctors struggling to lift Buck off of the floor, Bobby makes his way until he's in front of the kneeling body, and he sinks to the ground to meet him. As Buck continues to warble his brainwashed godcry, Bobby lowers his voice and leans into his ear, "Buck. Look at me. Buck. Buck."

He doesn't stop saying his name until Buck peeks out from behind his trembling visage of holiness, gaze hidden by fat tears and dissociation. Bobby doesn't let him look away. "Your name is Buck. You belong to yourself. Do you want to get back in the bed?"

Buck shakes his head so violently, his tears fall in opposite directions. "Evan belongs on the floor," he croaks. The feeling in Bobby's chest surges hotter.

"You can go wherever you want," Bobby tries, making sure to keep a safe distance between his mouth and Buck's skin. "If you want the bed, help yourself. If you want the floor, though, that's fine, too." 

Buck doesn't respond for a moment, overwhelmed and overstimulated, until he whimpers again, "Evan belongs on the floor."

"That's alright." Moving as carefully as he can, Bobby manages to get everyone to back up and sneak out the door, except for a nurse monitoring the machines next to the bed. He gets the blankets and the pillows from the mattress and lowers back down; there, he tucks the blanket over Buck's crumpled body and places the pillow against his side. Buck glances at him from behind crossed arms, confused. "You should at least be comfortable, Buck. I'm going to find your therapist, okay?"

As he goes to rise, however, a delicate, frightened grip latches onto his forearm. Buck doesn't move, still frozen, pliant, terrified, but he doesn't let go, either. Bobby relaxes, and, after a while, Buck does, too. 

When the therapist eventually finds them, Buck's asleep against Bobby's shoulder, snoring softly. Bobby watches him. He's been watching him since he saw him behind that wall. 

It feels wrong, but Bobby sees those syrupy-sweet eyes, ready to give in, in the back of his mind. He feels the flame. 

He has an idea.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buck hasn't told Bobby this next part, but Bobby knows because he knows everything about Buck, now.

Bobby visits Buck over the course of the next two weeks. His reasoning makes sense—turns out Buck was the one who started the fire, and he hasn't exactly been cooperative with the police. Everytime someone in blue crosses the threshold into his room, his nose wrinkles in distaste, and no questions get answered. The first time Bobby had knocked after the episode on the floor, Buck looked up at him from behind a cell phone and noted with a sheepish smile, "None of these things have any keys, man. This really is the future." 

So he's at the hospital every other day, sometimes two in a row, if he feels he's getting any leeway with the kid. That's how Athena Grant hears it, anyways. Bobby brings water or fruit up with him, sinks easily into the visitor's chair, and starts talking. 

It isn't easy to reach Buck. Most of the time it feels like he's out somewhere, away from his body. The days the mandated therapist makes him talk about his abduction, and whatever followed, Bobby can tell; he shuts down in favor of making distressed noises, rocking back and forth, and begging Bobby to leave as he hides his face behind his fists. 

Bobby always leaves. That doesn't mean he won't stand adjacent to the half-blinded windows outside, peering around the frame to watch Buck tremble and ache. 

The fire smolders beneath his bones, indescribable and incomprehensible.

Bobby pieces it all together, through talks with Athena, eventual progress with Buck, and his own fevered searching through police records and eye witness accounts to learn everything he can. He has to know what happened. He _has_ to. 

In Venice, Los Angeles, during the late spring of 2013, Buck was a bartender. Freshly twenty, living on his own for the first time, he worked the graveyard shift at the Scalpel, a popular hangout for the staff from local hospitals. He didn't go to school and he didn't practice a trade, but he seemed to be happy; he had an active dating life with both men and women, a generous amount of friends that attested to his stupid, loveable reputation, and an internet history that suggested he wanted a dog. 

On Saturday, May 23rd, Buck disappeared. 

He'd worked his hours at the bar, feeling pretty proud of himself for managing to finish closing on time _and_ for slapping the butt of the busboy as he'd left for the night. The guy had looked over his shoulder, smiling, before playfully escaping into his car. 

This had been on his mind as he'd locked the doors at two A.M. on the dot: a sense of accomplishment and a handful of cute ass. The glow of his pride quelled as soon as two rough hands clamped against his shoulders and shoved him against the side of the building. 

"There you are, Evan," a harsh, eerily familiar voice crooned into the shell of his ear, "I found you. Try to breathe for me."

Buck immediately screamed and kicked as hard as he could, which was pretty fucking hard, but it wasn't enough; the man was taller, stronger, and he had an arm wrapped around Buck's throat in a heartbeat.

Sputtering, Buck clawed at the flesh pinned underneath his chin, but the man simply lifted him off of the ground and carried him against his chest. His vision blacked out along with his breathing, and all Buck could do was watch darkness curl around his brain, until he wasn't registering the world around him. 

When he came to, he still couldn't see. A cloth bag had been fastened around his head, secured with something much too tight, and as Buck began to squirm, he felt the ropes keeping his wrists and ankles bound behind him. He was lying on his side. 

Something rumbled. An engine. Buck tried to sit up, roll over, do _something_ , but his head exploded in pain, and the walls seemed to be incredibly closed in. 

A trunk. 

The next seven years are a blank. Buck hasn't revealed much else, and if he's told Dr. Price more, she won't be sharing. She takes her state-appointed job very seriously. The story picks up when Bobby pried open the impossibly shut door and drug Buck back into the light of the living. 

Buck's being discharged today, his fractures mostly healed and the wounds on his skin all near closing. He's supposed to see Dr. Price three times a week, he confides in Bobby with his eyes rolled back in his head. Bobby tells him what a good idea he thinks it is, and Buck responds with one of those perfect, strange laughs Bobby's starting to love. 

"All I do is sit there and tell her about the worst things that've ever happened to me," Buck shrugs, mirth dying quickly. "It isn't helping. It just makes my nightmares worse." 

Bobby almost rests his hand on Buck's shoulder, but catches himself, and relishes in the relieved smile that flickers across Buck's face. Instead, he places it on the mattress next to him. "Being surrounded by your family in a house you know should help, don't you think?" 

Buck swallows, an action Bobby notices in excruciating detail, before scratching the back of his neck. His underarm is covered in scars, purple and thick and slicing in all directions. One that catches Bobby's attention snakes all the way from his armpit to the inside of his wrist. It's thinner than the rest, except where it finds the crook of his elbow, puffing out into a three-inch gash of yellow and gnarled white. Bobby watches this piece of mangled skin for a long time. 

"That...wasn't exactly my plan," Buck coughs, disrupting Bobby's thoughts. 

He sits up. "What do you mean?"

Buck's uncomfortable, so he's subconsciously trying to disappear into the mattress by pressing against it and shrugging the sheets above his chest. "My parents…" His eyes search the room wildly, but when they land on Bobby, they focus. "Well, my mom's here. I'm grateful for that. But she wasn't exactly there growing up, and my dad was _much_ worse. He hasn't even come to see me yet. And Maddie…"

Buck's pupils dilate, but Bobby holds his gaze as long as he can, and he somehow manages to keep going. "Maddie just got out of a really bad relationship. An abusive marriage. I can't just stick myself into her new house with her new boyfriend and put her out anymore than I already have. I can't do that."

Buck hasn't told Bobby this next part, but Bobby knows because he knows everything about Buck, now. Maddie was married to a man named Doug Kendall for several years, until she'd gathered the courage to file for divorce and press charges in 2012. It'd taken consistent, secret therapy and Buck standing by her side with his fists raised to get her through it. He'd threatened the guy, sure, but every time he'd gotten close to trying anything physical, Maddie would convince him to stop. If he'd laid a hand on Doug at the time, she'd have never forgiven him. 

Buck had liked him somewhat, before he'd started hurting Maddie. They weren't friends, but whenever their paths crossed, he'd always been polite and easy to get along with. They'd shared a beer at one of Maddie's backyard parties, a long time ago, leaning against the wooden porch and watching a few of the girls stringing up lights. 

"Cheers," Buck had said, raising his bottle. 

Doug smiled at him, the corners of his mouth curling impossibly high. Buck thought he was kind of cute, out of scrubs and a little tipsy. Maddie had done a fantastic job. "Cheers, Evan."

Bobby hasn't told Buck something of his own. He knows Maddie is dating Chimney, has known the entire six months they've been together. He hasn't met her very often, only occasionally at work events or at Chimney's house by happenstance. According to Howie, it's taken her a long time to step away from searching for her missing brother. When they go on dates, she's taking notes, and in large groups of people, she's searching every face. _She likes movies, though,_ he'd informed the team over lunch one afternoon, a distant smile on his face. _I took her to Star Wars. Neither of us knew what was going on, but she was relaxed! She had a good time! Somebody high-five me!_

Bobby's known who Buck is for five months. Hearing Chimney make a mention of it so casually in conversation a few weeks after asking Maddie out, something about _her missing brother,_ had stirred something in him, and he'd googled the name. 

_Evan "Buck" Buckley_

Pictures of a scrappy, athletic man dotted a few sparse corners of internet. Short hair, a dark, purple birthmark blossoming over his right eye, dressed in stolen college sweatshirts and thrifted basketball jerseys. Not a lot of information had been publicly released, then, even after all that time. Only photos, the last place he was seen, and the Missing Persons of Los Angeles phone number. No news coverage. No times, dates, or people of interest. Nothing. 

Bobby has revisited a certain picture a couple of times: "Buck" Buckley on the beach at sunset, in swim trunks and a damp t-shirt. An expletive must've been printed on the front, because the website the image was hosted on had blurred the text. A small campfire blazes in the back corner, surrounded by blurry silhouettes of people, and Mr. Buckley is smiling a crooked, startling smile in the foreground, right into the camera. 

Bobby looks at this picture every day for five months. 

He watches Buck for any trace of this smile when he spends his days in his hospital room, learning that this Buck isn't the Buck on the beach. This is a different, changed, caged Buck, who's closest imitation to a smile makes one want to cry. After these past two-and-a-half weeks, Bobby knows he won't see it in this sterile place. 

His idea. So perfect. So wrong.

"You could crash at the station," he offers, leaning back casually and making a serious effort not to light up at Buck's face, growing more surprised by the second. "We've got plenty of rooms. There's showers, and food, if Eddie hasn't beaten you to the fridge. You know you're always welcome."

A few moments of apprehensive silence pass before Buck reaches out and lays his hand gently across Bobby's. Bobby holds his breath. "Thank you, Bobby," he says softly, a ghost of that delirious smile making a guest appearance on his bruised face. "I think I'm gonna have to take you up on that offer."

 _Buck's going to live in my station,_ Bobby thinks dizzily. _He'll be safe. Fed. Rested. In_ my _station. Mine._

Bobby sits in his driver's seat twenty minutes later, and he grips the steering wheel with trembling hands until he can start breathing again. 

**Author's Note:**

> i love comments!!!!


End file.
